The desire to be transformed, the desire to be reborn in a spiritual dimension is dangerous. Dangerous in the sense that now you are leaving the path that is known, dangerous in the sense that now you are entering the uncharted, dangerous in the sense that you are now on a pathless path.
But nothing great happens if one is not ready to move into danger. Nothing worthwhile, nothing meaningful happens if one is not ready to stake his whole life on it. Unless you are ready to die for something, you cannot start living authentically. Only one who is ready to die can attain life.
The danger is worth trying. Nietzsche has said somewhere that his motto in life is “Live dangerously!” – because if you are not living dangerously, you are not living at all. “No danger” means no life. Only the dead are beyond danger.
Because of danger, we have become half-dead. Because of the fear of death, we have even become afraid of life. We cannot live, because to move into life is to move into the unknown – and religion is the most unknown dimension. To go to the moon is very difficult; it was impossible a few years ago, but man has gone to the moon. Man may go to other planets – that’s the adventure. Very dangerous, but nothing compared to religion. Why? – because in religion you are consciously moving into the inner space. About the outer space much is known but about the inner space nothing is known. Even those who have gone there, those who have known it cannot say anything about it.
Lao Tzu says: “Truth cannot be said, and if it is said, it is no longer the truth.” The ultimate cannot be named. If you name it, you have missed it. It remains inexpressible. Those who have gone to the inner space – and many have gone: a Buddha, a Jesus, a Confucius… Many have gone, but when they come back they are dumb, they cannot say anything about it. The experience is such that language is futile to express it. No map is yet available and never will be, no path is fixed.
The inner life is like moving in a wonderland. It is as if you are in a city and the city is constantly changing. The roads are changing, merging into each other. The houses are running around. Nothing is fixed: the city is a fluid city. Then no map can be drawn. Any map that is drawn is out of date the moment it is drawn because the city is constantly changing. No house remains constantly in one place. A street moves and meets another, a house moves from north to east. You cannot even find where your own house is. When you went to your office in the morning it was at point A, but it is no longer there. You can be certain of only one thing: that you will not be able to find it at A. It may be anywhere else.
If such a city, a fluid city, can be conceived, then you can have a glimpse of what the inner world is like. Life is a flux, existence is constantly changing. Nothing is fixed because nothing is dead. Only dead things are fixed. Alive means changing, constantly changing, river-like. That’s the problem.
In the center there is something that is non-changing. But that is in the center. When you move inward, you move into a changing world, into a flux, a dreamy world where everything is constantly changing. If you can pass through this changing world of dreams, words, thoughts, past memories, future projections – where everything is changing, fluid, flux-like – if you can pass through it, then one day you can come to the center.
But to pass this space of flux is the problem. Even those who have known it cannot describe what it is. It is dangerous because you cannot control it. You can control only the surface of the mind, just the surface. Even that is not totally controllable, but you can manage somehow; you can at least create a pretension, a facade that you are in control. The more you move inwardly, the more uncontrollable forces are encountered.
The more inwardly you move, the more you encounter contradictory forces. On the surface you may feel loving toward someone; deep down, you also hate him or her. You are never aware of this fact on the surface. You think that you love your child, you love your mother, you love your friend, your wife or your husband. This is only one aspect of the coin. The other side of the coin, the opposite side, is hidden right behind it. That’s why lovers can become hateful at any moment. Only lovers can hate intensely. The more intense the love, the more intense the hate will be. It is just the other side.
You live in a false world of non-contradictions. You think “I love someone so how can I hate him?” We have made a division: “I hate someone – how can I love him?” or “I love someone – how can I hate him?” This is not true, and if you move inward you will come to know that you love the same person you hate, and you hate the same person you love. You are contradictory, the whole of existence is contradictory. And because of this contradiction there is much anguish, much anxiety, much deep guilt.
The more inwardly you move, the more your facade, your face, your so-called personality is disturbed. Your ego is shattered. Then you cannot say “I am this and I am not that.” You are both: simultaneously both sinner and saint. Then it is difficult, things become unmanageable. You cannot even manage to maintain your identity, who you are. The old identity, the image, is broken because the contradictory forces are let loose.
That’s why we are afraid to go in. It is dangerous, but worth trying, because nothing is achieved without danger.
If you enter the inner space, you will not only encounter life, you will also encounter death because it is the polar opposite. Just as hate goes with love, death and life go together. You think that you are alive, but you never think that you are also death. You think that death is going to happen to you somewhere in the future – that you are alive and death is something that is going to happen to you, just like an accident, or like something from the outside.
That’s absolutely wrong. Death is not going to happen to you from the outside. Death is growing within you, it is part of you. You are not only life, you are also death. Death is not an accident, it is a growth. You are growing in death just as you are growing in life. They are both parts of you.
So if you enter within, sooner or later you will encounter death, which you have suppressed completely. That is the trick to suppress it: you always think death is somewhere in the future, that it is going to happen to you from the outside. So you go on thinking that somehow you can escape it, you can deceive it: “I can come to some arrangement with it.”
No arrangement will be of any help. You cannot escape it, because you are it: it is within you. But you have hidden it, you have unconsciously suppressed it.
We have repressed two things very deeply: sex and death. That’s why we never talk about sex or death: “It is not good to talk about these things.” If someone starts talking about them, it is not good manners. If someone starts talking about sex or death we would like to shut him up or change the subject.
Why are we so afraid of sex and death? – we are afraid of them because they are deeply related. You are born through sex and you will die through sex. Life and death are both centered on sex. We are afraid of death, that’s why we are afraid of sex. And if you are afraid of both death and sex, you are also basically afraid of life, because all three are one within. Sex is the energy. One pole is life, the other pole is death.
We have suppressed sex and death. If you go within, you will meet these friends waiting for you. They may have been waiting for lives, and they will go on waiting unless you meet them, encounter them – and transcend them.
That’s why the path of spiritual existence is fraught with dangers. You will meet your own repressed parts. Death is one of them. And when you meet death within, you become so afraid that you immediately want to come back to the surface.
Why are so few persons interested in going within? Why? For centuries and centuries they have been taught to go within, it has been a basic teaching all over the world to know thyself. But why are so few people interested, really interested, in going within? It is because unconsciously they know that if they go within, things will emerge, things will be encountered that they feel are dangerous. This unconscious idea creates a barrier.
So we go on talking of the inner journey, we go on talking of the spirit, of spirituality and everything, but we simply talk. We never try it, we never go on the real journey. We just talk and talk and talk. Religion has become just talk, and now it has become absolutely boring, because we have talked about it so much, for so many centuries, that now it looks like sheer madness.
The reason so few people are interested in moving inward is because if you go within, you will encounter death. But if you can encounter death without fear, and without returning to the surface, you will become deathless – because one who encounters death is already deathless. For the conscious being within you who encounters death, death becomes an object. And whatsoever you can be aware of, you are separate from.
I can see you because you are separate from me. I can see my thoughts moving in the mind because they are separate from me. I can close my eyes and see my heart beating because it is separate from me. I can see everything – except myself. I can see everything except myself because my subjectivity cannot be reduced to objectivity. I cannot make an object of my own self. Who will see it then? And if someone is seeing it, the someone who is seeing it is me – not the one which has become the object.
If you can encounter death, if you can see death within, you have transcended it. Now death is not for you. And both life and death can be encountered, both forces can be encountered. Hate and love – all the polar opposites can be encountered within. When you encounter them, you have transcended them. You have already transcended them in the very encounter. Now you are different from them. You are the witness.
That’s why I say that the danger is worthwhile. And when you come to a point deep in your meditation where you feel as if you are going to die – that the heart may stop at any moment – don’t be afraid. Remember that this is the moment for which you have been struggling for lives. Now don’t miss it. Enter it! Be ready, even if you feel you are going to die. Die! Say to death “I am ready now.” Surrender to it.
A single moment – and you will be different forever. You will have become deathless, or, something different both from what we call life and what we call death. That something, that X is the center – not only of you, but of the whole existence.

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